


The Ring Bearers

by Amethyst_Molly



Series: Story Pieces [5]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-17 02:41:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21046952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amethyst_Molly/pseuds/Amethyst_Molly





	1. Preface

A scream broke the uneasy silence that permeated the dilapidated shack. A woman was lying on the thin bed in the throws of labor. She was lit only by the fire in the fireplace, the chimney being the only part of the house that wasn’t falling down around them. There were two women attending to the birth, and an old crone whose glimmering black eyes who oversaw the proceedings. 

The women who were helping with the birth kept eying the crone, her wrinkled face taut with anticipation. She was one of the most feared things in the Eight Lands, she was a Ring Bearer. She said nothing, but they kept to their work. When she’d brought the woman lying on the bed to them, the only comfort that could be offered in such a harsh place was this shack ten miles outside the town. No one would willingly house a Ring Bearer, but that was no matter. She was not here to destroy, but to watch the creation of life. 

Kiyra, the girl on the bed, did not know why the Ring Bearer had taken an interest in her. The two midwives had visited her daily since she had been brought here, to this remote town. They would bring her food. No one knew but the Ring Bearers what a Ring Bearer ate, if anything, because no one had ever seen one eat. Of course, part of that was that it was difficult to tell if someone was a Ring Bearer, unless they showed someone their rings. Some looked like normal, everyday rings. Some were even earrings, running through thin bits of flesh and cartilage. It was when the rings ran in stripes up one’s legs, or hoops that encircled the waist, ankles, wrists, neck, anywhere it was possible to attach them. No one knew how they were formed, attached, or acquired. They only knew that the older and more powerful a Ring Bearer was, the more rings he or she had. 

The crone’s legs looked scaled, she had so many rings piercing the skin there. That and her face were all anyone saw of her. Her hands were gloved with thick animal hide, and she wore several layers of cloth over her arms and body, but the exposed legs spoke for what she was. Even those weren’t completely exposed; loose pants with the outside seam split, so that the most anyone caught was a second’s look at her leg in stride. 

It was said that if someone pulled a single ring off a Ring Bearer that the Ring Bearer would die, but as this became more and more unlikely as they acquired more and more rings, it was next to impossible for someone to even imagine the taking of one of the crone’s rings, let alone actually attempting. 

The crone’s name was Elara. Not that anyone asked. Not that anyone cared. She was merely the Ring Bearer crone who’d brought the pregnant woman to the town. A look at her face beyond seeing the wrinkles would not have been wise, nor healthy. Not that many could take their eyes off the rings long enough to look at her face. No one asked a Ring Bearer why they did what they did, just as no one asked why they never seemed to eat, sleep, or do any other normal things. 

“Remember,” Elara hissed to the two women, “The baby cannot touch her skin once he is born.” 

They nodded, going back to their work. Elara did not care that they feared her. Did not care that they thought she was going to somehow consume the baby upon its arrival into this world. She only cared that they did what was necessary to ensure both Kiyra and the baby lived. “It’s time,” one of the women declared finally, helping Kiyra to a squatting position. They positioned sheets over her legs, hoping to prevent even accidental contact with the baby. 

“I am so tired,” Kiyra said. 

“It’s almost over,” the other woman assured her, one hand on Kiyra’s belly. “Now push,” she said as she felt the contraction start. 

It took several tries for Kiyra to be able to give birth, but once started, it was quick. “Wrap the child well,” Elara said to the two women as she stepped forward. They did as they were told, and Elara took the child from them. “I will return,” she told them simply, and walked out into the night with the boy. 


	2. Chapter 1

Meliew was always and never alone. As a child in a large town, there were always others to play with, those he went to school with, and those whose parents were too poor to send a child to school to learn their numbers. But Meliew was never a part of their group. He was always apart from everyone. Certainly, there were times where he was included in this game or that to round out the numbers, so others weren’t left out, but there had always been something that set him apart, and he’d never known what. 

His parents were sweet and kind, and they only had him for a child. A strange, off-kilter sort of child, who saw more than he was supposed to and lived a strange sort of half-life, ghostly and not quite as much of the world that he lived in as everyone else. He sometimes felt sorry for his parents, for the affection that he was not entirely able to return. But that was the way that he’d always been, and he had not more than a passing thought at being different, about fitting in. But now, he was sixteen. His father’s training and his school lessons had given him the skills to take over after his father as the city’s clerk. It was a dreadfully boring job, but that didn’t matter. It was what his father did, so it was what he did. 

He was walking back from the city center, where the City Master lived, when a woman dressed in a burka stopped him. Not many wore full body coverings, especially when it was blastingly hot in the middle of the desert the way that Skray was. “Boy. Come,” she ordered and walked toward the edge of town and he stood there rather dumbly. Did she think him daft?

She turned back to look at him after a few moments. “Move your ass, Meliew, before I move it for you,” she said and continued to walk. She did not look back as he followed. There was a good chunk of desert between him and Skray before she stopped. There was a scraggly tree; there were more of the same around the oasis, but this was where the old lady had chosen to stop. She began to take off her head coverings, and he felt vindicated by his judgement from her voice; by the brittle greying hair, she was probably older than anyone in town. A woman, a young woman, probably not more than 20 stepped out from behind the tree. “Skray is bigger than most of the places we have been.”

“It is easier to hide things there.”

“What did you hide there, Mother?”

“The boy, of course. Where he could grow up ignorant and happy. But it will be not long before his power manifests.”

“This is...” she said, dropping to her knees.

“And you were new to your power, barely in control of it, his life could not be risked,” she said, and it might have been courteously called contrite. 

The young woman didn’t seem to think so. “Why didn’t you give me a choice?”

“There was no choice to be made. He needed to go. Now, he needs to come, as do you. There are five hundred dakaras to put behind us before the night is up,” she said, and they walked a small distance to the end of a rise that Meliew hadn’t realized was there. 

“You will learn to notice the small changes in the landscape as you learn more about yourself,” the old lady told him. There were three camels waiting for them beyond the rise, beyond the seeing of the town guards, or much of anyone else, for that matter. The fact that he had never ridden a camal was not, apparently, much of a concern to the old lady. It seemed more of a minor annoyance than a monumental task. Perhaps it was only a minor annoyance. She had directed him as to how to get on and how to find his seat so that they could be on their way. The light from Skray was no longer visible within half an hour, and he took a moment to wonder about going out into the desert with two women that he’d never met, especially when the one in charge seemed to keep many secrets from the other. 

The young woman didn’t speak on their journey, she seemed preoccupied with her own thoughts. That, of course, left Meliew with his own thoughts. The two women were a complete mystery to him, but for the first time in his life, he actually felt as though he’d been accepted for his whole person, and not just who was seen on the surface.


End file.
